t-mail comes in the form of small bubbles which expand when you activate them to be used as a sort of videophone screen. They may also be set to voice-only, if you prefer. When you activate a bubble, you tell it who you wish to call. A bubble belonging to that person will alert them that they have an incoming call, and if you identified yourself, it will tell them who it's from. They may then activate their own bubble to converse with you. Once a conversation is over, the bubbles are deactivated, and vanish. If no one is around when you call, you may leave a message, which they may activate later. The higher the priority, the more the bubble costs, therefore personal calls often utilize low priority t-mail. Business calls are usually standard, while high priority is rarely used for anything but an emergency. A t-mail bubble is considered "closed" if it is a single person-to-person call, and "open" if it is a conference call between more than two people. (The terms "closed" and "open" should not be confused with the voice command "open," which activates a bubble to place or receive a call, and "close," which closes the connection and causes the bubble to vanish. It should also be noted that the bubbles are enchanted in such a way as to ensure that the context of such voice commands is understood, so that if someone uses the word "close" in the course of conversation, the bubble doesn't vanish. The connection only closes if it is clear the word was used as a command.) Some bubbles will also respond to the voice command "save and close," to close a connection at the end of the call, but rather than vanish, the bubble will remain in existence and can be used later to play back the conversation it was used for.

Low priority bubbles have no particular protection built in to keep people from eaves-dropping on calls, but most people wouldn't know how to do that, anyway. Standard bubbles are nominally secure, but not truly hack-proof. High priority bubbles have special encoding to lock out any but the very best of t-mail hackers. The government has specially created t-mail which is not available to the general public, and this is super-coded, which means it's practically impossible to hack into, except perhaps by a specially trained master-adept. Of course, gangs which employ their own Sorreters may also have their own t-mail formats custom created to keep anyone from listening in, even government agents... unless the government is employing their own master-adept Sorreters....

T-mail. Just one of countless products mass-produced by industrial Sorreters to make your life more convenient and enjoyable. All these magical products are made possible by the Second Order.